http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
IF the airlines are waiting for Americans to feel unafraid,
and then to start flying again in the same numbers they
did before Sept. 11, it's going to be a very long wait.

Because there's a fallacy in that assumption. The fallacy
is that the reason people are staying away from airports
is their fright. People want to fly, the theory goes -- but
they won't until they get over the jitters born of that
September Tuesday.

Certainly that is a part of it -- people who were nervous
about flying before are even more nervous now, and
people who were relatively calm are not quite so relaxed.

But the real reason it's going to take a very long time
before the number of air passengers reaches its
pre-Sept. 11 level has to do with something other than
safety.

And you don't have to look back very far to understand it.

Do you remember when the heads of the airlines were
promising elected officials that they would stop treating
their passengers like livestock? It began in the summer
of 2000, after officials of United Airlines lied again and
again to passengers about the reasons for canceled
flights. It was the weather -- that was one lie. Or
"equipment" -- another lie. The real reason was a labor
dispute with pilots -- and United's strategy was to keep
the truth from the people who were purchasing the
tickets. If United had told the truth -- had said that it could
not guarantee that its flights would take off -- then
passengers would have chosen another airline. So
United took the money, and let the passengers fend for
themselves during that summer of airport chaos.

The public's anger, not just toward United but toward the
big airlines in general, led to a pledge from the airline
industry: Passengers would come first. The industry
would reform. There was a list of things the airlines
would do to make flying a tolerable, if not pleasurable,
activity again.

Remember that?

It's gone. Because of Sept. 11, passengers are being
treated worse now than before -- the lines are longer, the
demands on customers are more intrusive, no-frills
service has taken on new meaning. But the passengers
can't complain -- to do so would sound unpatriotic. In the name of safety -- and for
good reason -- the airports are being run in a way that would have been
unrecognizable before Sept. 11.

Because of this, the airlines are probably safer today than they were back in August.
Which is why safety will not be the underlying reason people continue to stay away
from the airports.

The real reason comes down to something that has been building for years, and that
has been reported upon here even before Sept. 11 -- something that can be summed
up in a slogan protesters used to write on signs they waved at Dwight D.
Eisenhower's secretary of state before he went off on farflung foreign travels:

"Is this trip necessary?"

People aren't asking it of politicians these days -- they are asking it of themselves. If
flying, because of the new security measures, has become so frustrating -- the long
lines, the need to arrive hours early, the searches, the identity checks -- and if to object
would be improper because the measures are there for a valid reason, then there is
an alternative:

Don't go, unless you really need to or really want to.

It's an elementary concept -- yet one that sort of got pushed aside during the years
when business trips were undertaken as automatically as strolls to the mailbox, and
when every weekend was a potential getaway vacation. Today, with the new flying
regulations, staying at home -- both for business and for pleasure -- is beginning to
seem like an attractive option. Not because it's safer -- but because it's less
exhausting. Getaway? A getaway, all of a sudden, seems defined as not hitting the
road. If a vacaction is a soothing shutting out of stress, then staying put is the new
vacation.

That's what the airlines have to contend with -- and it is a formidable opponent. This is
a sea change in American life. Wanderlust has long been the ideal. Now the lust is not
to wander. And it's cheaper. As for the promised-before-Sept.-11 "passengers' bill of
rights," you can forget it, for the duration. Is this trip necessary? Few trips, it turns out,
are.

JWR contributor Bob Greene is a novelist and columnist. Send your comments to him by clicking here.